PPG2017: Final Thoughts

All policy is urban policy. Municipalities are more than just creatures of the provinces. Not all governing is done by government. These are some of the phrases that have been eternally burnt into my brain after 6 weeks of PPG2017.

I think its safe to say Gabe has successfully turned me into an urban policy minion. I’ve been convinced that some of the most important policy decisions are made at the local level. Municipalities provide services that affect residents at every waking moment. Cities are where things get done!

So how do we convince the rest of the world that urban governance is important?

Ontario’s municipal elections occurred on October 24th 2022. Voter turnout in Toronto was around 29%. Voter turnout across the province was 36% (the lowest since 1982). Major yikes. For one reason or another, residents decided not to cast their ballots. I’m taking it as a sign that Ontarians simply didn’t care much about the election.

At the beginning of our PPG2017 course, we crafted a list of urban policy areas and issues. The first topics that came to mind were pretty classic municipal functions: garbage collection, snow clearing, parking enforcement. While important, these aren’t exactly the kind of topics that send most people to the polls.

But after a while, our class began listing issues that were a bit less obvious: immigration, climate change, homelessness. These are all problems that cities (alongside other levels of government) have to address.

Let's take the example of immigration. Even though provincial and federal governments have jurisdiction for immigration under the Constitution, what happens when someone actually lands in Canada? Usually, they move to a city which has greater access to housing, employment and social services. Maybe they’ll join a neighbourhood community center or put their children in day-care. Many of these services are delivered at the local level.

I don’t know about you, but access to affordable housing and social services sound a lot sexier than garbage collection to me. These are issues people care about and (hopefully) vote on.

So maybe the way to get people paying attention to urban governance is by connecting the issues they care about to the cities they reside in. Whether that’s through an amped up social media strategy, press conferences, or some other means is out of scope for this blog post. But getting people to care about urban policy is likely necessary to raise voter turnout in future municipal elections.